You wanted to get away from it all. Book a cruise. Turns out, it’s a cruise from Hell. Can’t get back inland. Some tourists contracted the virus. Voila. Cambodia, the Killing Field, would take you in. After all, it’s used to genocide, pesticide and any kind of death and dying. In my time, I experienced…

Before “dust come to dust” i.e. my cremation, I just want you all to sit down and enjoy the show. A multi-media, multi-lingual slide show, interjected with live comments from friends who pass the mike around if they feel like saying something (stirring and settling ). No need to pay for the podium. We can…

We exist in space and time, stringing each moment to become a whole, to make a life. Some moments are more memorable than others, but all count. The learning years, the earning years and the “burning” years. This is a moment I throw in the towel. Can’t compete for online attention. We’ve got Twitter and…

The Beach Boys turned it down. So Terry Jacks went ahead and sang it himself. It turned out to be a hit back then. Sometimes, fate has it for us to experience those “rejects”. In sales, we all know rejection comes with the job. Walk the pavement until it’s blue in the face and faint…

To join a chorus of “best books of the year”, I want to reflect on my reading life, on what struck me in particular and who left long-lasting legacy in shaping my thoughts The Remains of the Day – told from a “downstairs” perspective Never Let Me Go – how humanity, esp love, somehow cross-over…

We will hear a lot of these pre-announcements of upcoming sales etc…. The shopping spree season is well underway. Materials over morals, stuffs over senses. We need to fill up the empty space. Cosco knows this. It provides shoppers with huge shopping carts. Buying in bulk, buying at convenient stores, buying at drive-ins. Buying online,…

America’s favorite pastime back in the early 60’s was a Sunday drive; mine in Vietnam was a Sunday stroll with my Dad. Sunday was his only time to spare for me. We would breakfast in District 1 (beef stew) or District 5 (Pho Tau Bay). To work off those heavy beef-base meals, we would stroll…

I have just flown back from Vietnam. A short trip. Un-productive but not wasted. Then I am back to this bubble, with an elephant in the room: “do you hate him?”. Vietnam has its own elephant. But its winter of discontent is milder than the one I am about to experience here in the US.…

Albert Schweitzer once said that the greatest tragedy in life was wasted talent. We do fade out before fully exploiting our brain power. I have tried not to fall into this trap hence tragedy; but so far kept failing. The brain itself consumes a lot of energy, and we all have to burn energy to…

I passed by the old neighborhood where my mom taught for 30 years. The hospital for common folks was nearby. A flood of memories rushed back. Once, my small foot got caught in the scooter’s rear wheel (and the emergency staff there were extremely helpful and considerate). Or toward the end of my first month…